One of the many victims of Sandy: Jalopnik. Along with the other servers of the Gawker network, Jalopnik joined the fate of some ten thousand websites served by 150 data centers on the East Coast that were drowned out by the ferocious storm. Even after going down, the site’s problems did not end.

We wish our colleagues at Jalopnik all the best and a speedy comeback. Also, we recommend to hunt down whoever changed Jalopnik’s redirect from http://updates.jalopnik.com to http://w.jalonik.com, a site that offers “wife swapping”, and “colon cleansing” along with more traditional fare such as “body kits” and “Cadillac Escalade.”

According to the New York Times, the Gawker sites share a common Internet service provider, Datagram, housed in the financial district in Lower Manhattan, which lost power on Monday evening. TTAC’s servers are in a secure location in Canada, and its editors are dispersed over multiple continents.

Update: The hijack of Jalopnik’s emergency site appears to be fixed. Jalopnik now redirects to the proper ersatz-Jalopnik page that sports familiar robust language like “The asshole spreading false info on Twitter revealed.”

Being in Lower Manhattan, the Gawker/Jalopnik servers enjoy a more sprightly nightlife, but the bar bills are murder…and there’s the whole flooding thing. The TTAC servers, meanwhile, have access to Tim Horton’s, and need only worry about being buried in snow, which is fine because servers THRIVE in the cold.

“the Gawker sites share a common Internet service provider, Datagram, housed in the financial district in Lower Manhattan, which lost power on Monday evening. TTAC’s servers are in a secure location in Canada, and its editors are dispersed over multiple continents.”

ARPANET in action! So TTAC should survive a less than total nuclear strike while Jalopnik/Gawker and a host of other websites will be taken permanently offline?

Well its good to know I’ll have something to read during the Apocalypse.

Yep. I frequent both sites. It’s not uncommon for TTAC to cover the exact same stories on the same day as Jalopnik. Sometimes after Jalopnik breaks the story.

Seems neither site has much in the way of frequent car reviews, though. TTAC has more dry industry talk, more interesting editorials and stories, but no more real content. Jalopnik just fills the gaps between meaningful stuff with dumb content like top 10s, silly rumours, SEO headline chasing (“Whitney Houston is dead! What car would a bodyguard drive?” “Neil Armstrong is dead! What car would you drive on the moon?”).

Both are good for what they are. Jalopnik is bite sized fun with a dose of the ridiculous. TTAC is serious business with the odd weird bit from Murilee or Baruth.

I keep coming here because it offers a different perspective on cars and I’m forcing myself to get used to the idea that there are people out there that I may not agree with on cars.

If it’s any consolation, I’m taking a course called “Cars, Culture and Media”. TTAC and Jalopnik (along with several other blogs) were blogs that I recommended to the instructor for keeping up on car news, etc. The course does focus on the effects of the automobile on the environment but it is not totally anti-car. The key is to seek out balance and that the car has had so much of an influence on American culture that it’s difficult, if not downright impossible to imagine an existence without it.

Again, balance is the key here. This is why I’m not opposed to hybrid or electric vehicles. I balance that with my love of quirky automobiles that get little, if any love from the automotive mainstream.